Menu

finance

I am going to give you today the number one way to get rich. It is a step that you HAVE to follow if you want to have sustainable financial success in your life. Staying broke.

Probably everyone of us knows the feeling. We are getting a raise. We started a new business that gives us some extra money. Or won something gambleing. What do we do? Do we save it? Maybe. Maybe a small percentage of what we got. But certainly not a lot- And certainly not ALL of it.

How long do you want to take to actually get rich? To actually not worry about your finances anymore? To live the life of your dreams? You can get rich the slow way. Or you can do it the fast way. It is up to you. I suggest you to take the fast way to financial success.

“How do I take the fast way to financial success?”

You do it by staying BROKE. Notice I say broke not poor. You will massively increase your income. At the same time you will have the same expenses that you’ve ever had. Prefereably even lower ones!

Staying broke is the way to go. I did the same mistake each and every time I got money. I was spending it for useless shit. It didn’t matter how much money I made. At the end of the month I was alsways +/- 0 (after a modest amout of savings). My income increased and decreased during the year. The amount of money I had at the end of the month never did.

Until I decided to change something. I kept track of what I NEED to spend every month to have a decent life. Good (but fairly cheap) food, entrence for clubs, expenses for things like gym, transporation and mobile phone. I made sure those expenses are as low as possible.

Everything I made after my normal monthly expenses I SAVED. I didn’t spend the money, NO MATTER WHAT. My income increased and suddenly I had cashbundles laying around the house. Never violating my rule of staying broke.

If you ever want to have financial success. If you ever want to make and KEEP a lot of money, internalise the rule of staying broke! If you increase your income while staying broke at the same time you will get the financial success you desire in the shortest time possible.

If you like this post I HIGHLY encourage you to check out this book by Tony Robbins:

Money is a topic that everyone is concerned with. After all, what is as important as money? Good relationships and health one could answer to that question. However I doubt you can sustain a good relationship to your kids when you don’t make enough money to feed them. I doubt it is good for your mental health when you live paycheck to paycheck and have the constant worry of getting replaced at your job.

These days everyone has to TAKE CHARGE of their own life. No one else will support you. You are on your own. And you have to be an creative and active thinker to strive in this chaotic world we live in.

You need different income streams for sure. Otherwise you won’t make it. Sources of income streams would be:
• a job
• real estate that you own and rent out
• stocks
• bonds
• your own business

A specific form of a way that EVERYONE can make their own money is something that I like to call YOU.INC. That is, building your own brand that revolves around your personality, your passions and your interest.

The good thing about building a business like that is that no one can really replace you. There is only one person in the world that is you. And that is YOU.

What do you need to build an YOU.INC:
1. Be yourself
2. Live a life
3. Express yourself so people can find you (Blog or Youtube)
4. Learn to market yourself to people
5. Sell a product or service

It is that simple. Build your personality. Know what you want and what you stand for. Then you will have a message to share. You share this message with people and learn to market yourself in a good way. More and more people will follow your message and want to be a part of you and your project. At the end you can sell your product or service to people. When they love you, they will also love to support you with their money. There are Youtubers and Bloggers that make MILLIONS these days. Even if this might not be your goal. Supplementing your income by having your own business that revolvs around being you is something that you can be pround of and have some fun with. Start today. Build a website. Build a blog. Learn what your readers want and market it to them. Then lean back and count your cash.

Publishing videos is very simple. Simply create an account and start filming.

What have been the magazines now is the blog. What was the Television is now YouTube. It is a new era. Gone are the old times. And this is wonderful. Because everytime there is a new era. There are new ways to make money. Blogging is one of them. Making Videos is one of them. Doing podcasts is one of them. All of it is a fantastic way of making money while simultaniously expressing oneselfs ideas to the world.

There is a concept called You.Inc. Builing the brand of yourself. You are making money with your own Brand. With who you are. I do like this fact a lot. Because I always wanted to get paid for being me. Today I have the opportunity.

I finished reading an incredebly written and very motivating post: http://www.financialsamurai.com/how-to-build-passive-income-for-financial-independence/

Let me give you the gist that I got out of it:
1. Predetermine your financial goals (How much money do you need a month to be happy?)
2. Put as much money on the side as you can
3. Safe and Invest that money and NEVER touch it
4. Work on some bigger project while simultaniously investing (i.e. building your brand, blogging, youtube) and get some more money

Repeat that circle and you will be pretty much guaranteed to be successful. What I like about that formula is that it is easy and actually applicable for everyone.

I am doing the following now to get a step closer to my financial goals..
.. I have 750 bucks safed (my savings since I started my journey ~1 month ago)
.. I have 70 bucks invested in something that will return me 150 bucks
.. I need to call a new client that is interested in getting tutoring lessons with me (been procrastinating on that all the time)
.. I am building my brand as I am writing this post here right now

Okay, so I had a pretty good time financially the last two weeks. I managed to get a couple pojects going that gave me some extra income. The last two weeks my main focus wasn’t to make a lot of money that I actually had to work for. But more so finding way to get some passive income streams going. The money I got was from projects that I “ran into” as well as some stuff that I had going for me since a couple months now. Note that all my living expenses are covered already. So everything I earn, I keep.

So in total I made 445€ in the last two weeks. A nice little side income. But some of it are birthday gifts (120€). So I obviously can’t be proud of it. I definatly have to find some more ways to get income streams going.

My plan for the comming week is:
• Write a Sales Letter for “the millionaires fastlane” by M.J. DeMarco
• Get a doctors certificate that I need
• Think of 10 new business ideas that can earn me some passive income

I am really driven. The time has come to make some good money. Money is a really important part of life. No matter if you value it or not. Or how much you value it. Money is FREEDOM. And freedom in my opinion is the most important thing in life.

There are two things that I am earning and saving money for:

Goals: 50.000 € for a special “toy” that I need more then anything else in my life
50.000 € for in apartment in a city in europe I want to live in

Do or die. I will either accomlish those goals or die. Straight up. It is a 100k in total. A sum that shouldn’t take that long to earn. Getting by was always my main focus up to this point though. Never making money (at least no SERIOUS attempt to do so). So I wil need some time to figure it out. I will give myself a deadline of 2 years to accomplish my financial goal. 2 years. From this day. In 2 years I will have 100.000 bucks and I will be able to fulfill the two goals I have.

Having an income stream that puts money in your pockets whether you work, drive in your car, chill at the beach or take a nap just feels amazing. This is what abundance feels like. Comming home and seeing that your expenses are low and your income comes into your bank account without you lifting a finger is a very nice thing.

Now I am not a financial expert by any means. I have just a big interest in finance since I was very young. Have read a couple books on that topic. And I am starting out my own journey to financial abundace at the moment.

But the idea how passive income (as a synonym to financial abundace) makes you feel great came today to me after I was checking out my bank-account. I bought stocks from a company 2 years back. That company pays really nice dividends on their stocks. I didn’t even know that their annual general meeting is this month.

However today I checked my bank account. While I didn’t really noticed the increase at first I was scrolling through my income statement and saw that the company just payed out some cash.

It is not a million dollars or anything. But it is a nice feeling non or less. I bought this stock a couple years back as one of my first investments and didn’t really touch it ever sice. The investment was moderate. Maybe a little over 1000€. But it is going well. I collect some dividens and in a couple years I will sell the stock with a nice price increase.

I will write a little bit more about money and business here in the future. But in the meantime I highly encourage you to do your own research about passive income and ways to invest your money in a smart way.

Ways to make passive income:

1. Stocks and Bonds
2. Investing in real estate

Those are two ways to make good passive income. The down-side of those is that you usually already have to have some money that you can invest. Lets say you worked hard in a job for 10 years. Safed a solid amout of money. Now you can look for stocks and properties to buy. The good thing about those is that once you have everything set up (bought a property and have solid tenants or bought quality stocks) you barely have any work with it.

3. Selling your own product
4. Selling someone else product

Here you have to do some work first. You have to buy something that you can sell. You have to set up a website to market the products of other people. Or, you have to create a product (for example an ebook or a video course). You have to get the word out too. It requires some up front work. Just as in stocks and real estate you have to make money first to invest it. Here you don’t really have to have money in the beginning. Besides some small amount for setting up a website maybe. You put the work in first. And collect the dividends later.

As you see: No money is really entirely passive. Nothing in life comes for free. You have to do the work first. You will usually have some moderate time investment as well. For example managing your stocks once a year to see if the ones you bought are still the smartest choice. Managing the website you have. And so on. However most of it is pretty simple and you can either outsource it, or do it in a couple hours yourself.

My suggestion is to increase your income. Minimise your spendings. And then invest the difference in things that make money for you (Stocks, Real Estate, Businesses). This is how you escape the rat race and will be financially free.

In the end you can let me know.. Are you interested in money and finances? Do you currently invest your money? And what types of investments do you have? Let me know in the comments! And see you under the next post.